The keys to gathering an audience for your film via a successful word of mouth campaign are twofold 1) creating compelling content that people will share and/or talk about and 2) finding your ”sneezers,” as Seth Godin calls them, to help pass the content around and bring their people into your circle.  Sneezers are the people who spread the “gospel” of your work. They are influencers who generally have a following within a particular niche. People listen to a good sneezer and if the sneezer talks to them about you or your film, they will check it out. So how do you find these sneezers?

Identify the niche audience that your film will attract. Within that niche, there are people who stand out as “experts” or are “the voice” of that niche. Most likely they have an online platform (blog or website) that they use to speak to their audience. If you can identify them by name, do a Google search to find out where they hang out online and get an approximation of their following. Do they have a lot of Facebook fans? A large Twitter following? A YouTube channel with many views? Once you find one sneezer, you are likely to find more because they tend to follow each other, comment on each others’ posts, speak on Twitter or are active on the same forums. You want to know what vehicles they use to communicate with their audience; your audience.

When approaching them, you have to be cautious. Their credibility is at stake any time they recommend something so you don’t want to undermine that or bombard them with requests from an unknown entity. Start by listening. Monitor what they say, read their blog posts and twitter posts, subscribe to their newsletter or RSS feed. I know it sounds a little stalker-like and it is, but you aren’t going to be malicious. You should have interests in common with this person if they are part of your target audience, they just don’t know you yet. After you get a handle on what they talk about, try commenting on their blog posts or their Facebook page entries. Suggest topics unrelated to your film but interesting to their audience. In other words, engage them in conversation, but not a one sided, all-about-you conversation. Keep in mind that their content is also something that you can perpetuate on your platforms. If they have a good video or blog post, repost it. Your followers will be interested in what they have to say. This should lead to some reciprocity.

This is a time consuming process, but totally worth it in terms of gathering an audience for your work. If you can get some of these sneezers into your circle and they help you enlarge the circle, you will reap the rewards of a large following. When you find your sneezers, embrace them and empower them, because they are your strongest “viral” marketing tool.

When I set up accounts for films and filmmakers on Facebook, I generally like to set up Fan pages rather than Group pages. Some ask what the difference is and here is a little explanation.

Fan pages are better used to create long lasting relationships and offer a more interactive community. They are meant for businesses, public figures and brands. Your film is a brand. Group pages are used to rally people around a certain cause or common interest, like guerilla filmmaking or users of the RED camera.

Group pages are not circulated into the members’ “feeds” on their user profile, therefore to see any updates, the group members must go directly to the page to see posts there. With a Fan page, updates are circulated into the home “feed” of the users. Fan pages are randomly suggested on the home page in the upper right hand corner. Facebook will often show Fan pages that friends are  fans of and will position them so one can easily join them. This spreads the word about your page through your existing fan base and their friends are more likely to become a fan of your film if they know someone who is. 

Fan pages also provide the ability to track who is visiting your page, their demographics, how often and the interactivity level of fans on the page through their metrics function. Group pages do not have a metrics capability. However, there must be more than 10 fans for the metrics capabilities to begin. Fan pages are indexed by search engines and are visible to people unregistered with Facebook. This helps with your overall film presence online. Groups are not indexed in the search engines.

When you want to bring attention to your Facebook presence, you have more options with a Page than with a Group. Group updates are  dependent on either  members taking an active interest in the group by visiting regularly and/or members’ personal News Feed settings being configured to show sufficient updates from the  group. Neither variable is under the control of the group owner.  A Page supports notification in update streams. These updates stand alone in a side-bar to the right hand side of the page under Highlights and are much less likely to get lost in the stream of other kinds of notifications on a profile newsfeed.

Pages allow for sending mass updates to all fans with an opt out function. Users can also specify which of their Fan Pages can notify them. This promotes good will to your fans that you are not spamming them with useless notifications and if they think you are, they can opt out. Updates also appear in a special subsection of your fans’ inbox, helping segregate it out from the rest of the messages they may be receiving on Facebook.

On Fan pages you can add applications such as quizzes and games or content from other sites such as your blog feed, Twitter feed, Digg, etc.  With Groups you cannot feed in outside content. Both Group and Fan pages allow for wall posts, video and photo uploads.

Facebook Pages — but not groups — can utilize the built-in demographic information to create micro-targeted ads. Through the use of your Fan metrics, you can determine who is likely to respond to your message and you only pay to target those people. You can set daily budgets that cannot be surpassed, but Facebook advertising is another conversation.

A Fan page is more of a running conversation with your audience. It provides interactivity between you and your fans and the fans with each other. This is what social media is all about. I would also suggest leaving the privacy settings on the page open so that all fans may post links, photos, videos etc. If a fan takes advantage in a spammy or objectionable way, administrators of the page can delete posts and report the behavior.

I just found this in my Google alerts regarding comments made on Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film site about self distribution. It is an open letter  on FilmUtopia.Posterous.com addressing some of his comments and asking a few more questions, good questions. Then Ted made a response, then Clive made another response. So the debate went on and you can participate too if you want. Debate is good, debate is healthy, it will help us all create community and find answers.

This article was sent to me today, but published last fall in Filmmaker Magazine written by Jon Reiss. It chronicles his adventures in self distribution for his film BOMB IT. Below, you will find an extremely helpful budget for both typical service deals and what Jon actually budgeted and spent to self distribute. A great resource.

Visit Jon’s blog or buy his new book Think Outside the Box (Office): The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing in the Digital Era for great advice and case studies on other filmmakers who are self distributing and navigating the new digital landscape for indie film.

This is an excerpt from a great blog I have been reading by John Rodsett, also known as Mr. Film Biz. It is reprinted here with his permission, but I encourage you to check out what he has to say on his site.

I always think it sad when a producer finishes his film, signs on a sales agent and then waits for months and hears nothing. What is worse is they get no money from any sales during this time. To help mitigate this dilemma, a producer must use some common sense and be on guard for an agent who does not fit with his needs or hopes.

How does one select a good sales agent?

Well this is not easy. Start by finding out who are the sales agents. Do this by obtaining copy of the Hollywood Distribution Directory, published by the Hollywood reporter. This directory is a fine source of information. Select a few and check them out. Look at the type of films they represent; how long have they been in business; if they attend film markets; if they provide references; ask friends in the film biz if they know of them, use due diligence!

Producer & sales agent agreement – points to watch.

Finalizing an agreement with a sales agent can go on and on, but I think these points will assist you.

 Term of the contract

A producer needs to ensure the agent has enough time to sell, but if he is not doing a great job, you need to be able to terminate the agreement. One way is to agree to a short term deal, maybe one year with option of additional year. Another way to try and ensure performance by the agent is to state that if the sales agent does not approach a certain amount of within a period of time, the producer can terminate. This area can be contentious, so be prepared to negotiate.

Potential revenue

A producer should ask the agent to provide a list of potential revenues for the major territories. This usually covers all rights for the individual countries such as Germany, UK, Japan etc. Such a list can be very revealing, as it will show the producer, probably for the first time, the potential revenue he may get for the film he has spent two years of his life to make and, also, whether his investors will ever get their money back. Please note these estimates by territory provided are only estimates and many factors go into such a list including, budget, actors, genre, etc.

What is beneficial about this list given to you by your potential agent is that the producer can state that territories cannot be sold beneath a set price without producer agreement. This prevents an agent selling your film below a value you wish to obtain – of course that has its own downside in that you need to negotiate that with the agent and the might feel inhibited during the sales process at a market. So there is good and bad in this area.

Arbitration

Make sure you have in any agreement with an agent for a binding arbitration clause that in event of a dispute no law courts are used to settle the matter, but an arbitration tribunal will make a decision that is binding on all parties. Cheaper and quicker that law courts.

Access to film/digital masters

Never, never, never, NEVER allow the agent access to your film negative or digital masters. You provide to the agent only the masters specified in the licensing agreements for sales with buyers. However, I must warn you, the agent has ways around that control, but that is a completely different discussion……..

Documentation/Accounting

The producer MUST get full and documented accounting of all costs and revenue from the agent. Quarterly for the first year, then half yearly from then on. Also, get signed and fully executed copies of all licensing agreements with buyers on sales made for your film.

Wrapping it up…

A contract between a producer and sales agent is an important and complex document and if not fully examined can cause the producer real heart ache over a long period of time. So try and do it right up front and pay for a good entertainment lawyer to help you!!!

My recent interview with filmmaker Jim Rothman just went live today in Microfilmmaker Magazine. To read it, go here.  In next month’s issue, I will be outlining how to use various low cost marketing methods to attract attention from distributors. I have some interesting case studies of filmmakers who did just that and you will read their stories plus my tips.

I received an interesting link to Arin Crumley’s (director of Four Eyed Monsters) new film funding venture OpenIndie. It is worth checking into if you are a filmmaker looking for funding, and who isn’t! Another site coming online very soon will be using a different method for attracting film funding. It is called Biracy and I am talking to the founder at the moment. I will post a link when their Beta test is live.